Balanced Brawl Public Preview *GENESIS UPDATE*

[VietGeek]

also to those people who still read the list and comment on it, PLAY THE GAME! the changes look far less then they really are

Except for Ganon's Shoryuken...

I reset the game after seeing that. <_<

 

[adumbrodeus]

Except for Ganon's Shoryuken...

I reset the game after seeing that. <_<

Lol, yea, that change is amazing. Makes edgehogging him much riskier.


In general Ganon needs to be relearned, but it'd be worth it.

 

[Silent Beast]

-No helpless fall state out of Egg Roll; it instead refreshes his double jump

I'm confused by what you mean by "refreshes." Does that mean that you could double jump, egg roll, and then double jump again, kinda like Falcon's/Ganon's down-B in Melee?

 

[Rykoshet]

I love that dark dive uppercut.

 

[Stealth Raptor]

I'm confused by what you mean by "refreshes." Does that mean that you could double jump, egg roll, and then double jump again, kinda like Falcon's/Ganon's down-B in Melee?

exactly, but you lose a lot of vertical range, not to be used a bunch like falcons was

 

[Winnar]

First impressions after an hour and a half of playing this!

-Falcon's pummel is hilarious, awesome job on that XD
-Luigi's fireball doesn't need to be that fast, it's kind of ridiculous.
-Why didn't Mario's fireball get a speed increase? I think he needs it more?
-This is just a personal opinion, but I don't think anyone would object to Jigglypuff's rest getting buffed a little.
-Is MK's mach tornado faster? I don't really play him but when I tried him it seemed like changing directions happened faster (which was kiiiiind of silly). It could just be my imagination I guess.
-Temple. I'm not sure what's going on there, and I'm also not sure if I like it. The cave was my favorite part, but that's a personal thing (it's fun to practice teching)
-Ness's PK Fire is really good now, maybe too good?

That's all I remember at the moment.

All in all: Fun, exciting, looking forward to watching this progress.

 

[Praxis]

Wait, from what I have read in the OP, they really didn't touch MK's Recovery aspect. Would you be so kind as to clarify what you meant by the bolded part of the quote?

Also good luck with this project. While I currently have a preference to that other big modded Brawl project, I wouldn't mind seeing how this develops and grows.

They didn't touch his recovery, but they reduced his kill power, which makes him have a difficult time killing. He's weaker, thus gimped.

 

[The Sex Puma]

Are Oh Eff El.

 

[goodoldganon]

Wario ***** pretty hard without the fear of getting grabbed looming over his head. I'm not sure about leagues better then every character, but I would say he certainly could be BB's best character.

 

[Dastrn]

This looks really good. I'm going to try it out as soon as i get a chance.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

About Luigi's Fireball, it's a targeted change. Basically, it's not that good in general (fun fact: Ike can just jab though Fireball spam), but it does give him a pretty effective long range poke which should hopefully really help him in his major problem matchups with Meta Knight and Mr. Game & Watch.

Mach Tornado is definitely not any better than before in terms of speed.

Temple is indeed kinda goofy, but the logic was really "why not?". Unchanged it's an insta-ban stage so there's really nothing to be had but gains.

Anyway, thank you for your input. This kind of playtesting and reporting is exactly what is helpful to us.

As per the Wario concerns, do know he's on our watch list. He, along with several other characters, has nerfs "ready", but due to a general strong hesitation to any but the most conservatively necessary of nerfs, we wanted to see their performance first. Do note that the da'mage nerfs cut a bit into Wario's kill power, not just his damage output. They're decidedly non-trivial nerfs that he already has.

 

[Zephil]

Great idea guys good luck with this proyect... I just have a couple of things I think can be really useful to add:

1) I agree with Winnar, you should buffer at least a little Jigglypuff´s rest
2) Maybe do something similar to Ness´ PK Thunder as you did to Ike´s QD. I still thinks is unfair for poor Ness to have such a bad recovery, maybe you can exchange one of Ness´buffs like Ness dthrow with a buff in his recovery

 

[Praxis]

I'd like to touch on my main briefly.

1. Peach
-Slightly more knockback on forward smash: golf club (70/50) -> (75/50), frying pan (68/30) -> (68/50)
-Slightly more knockback on Peach Bomber (40/50) -> (50/50)

Peach was already a good character with terrific pressuring ability. These changes compliment her existing KO power, hopefully bringing her up a notch.

These changes betray a bit of a lack of knowledge of her metagame. Peach Bomber is considered virtually useless in play, and never used in tournament except to slingshot off pillars and refresh moves, and for recovery (not as an attack). Forward smash, meanwhile, is not used for kills. The low cooldown of it and the raised angle make it an ideal anti-aerial spacing tool, and it is abused to shut down Marth (Stutter step a Fsmash backwards if he tries to tipper a fair, he misses and gets fsmashed).

As such, increasing fsmash knockback does little to increase her kill potential. She'll still find Snake living to 250% every stock, and in fact be very little changed.

Kill power IS her biggest problem, however.

I'd suggest, rather (or additonally), either reducing the lag frames on her airdodge (she has the worst airdodge in the game by a ridiculous margin), or instead buffing her fthrow (her throw game is virtually useless once the opponent passes 50% or so, and fthrow doesn't kill G&W until 200% FRESH, I've tested >_<).

In fact, I think increasing fthrow kill power by 50% or more is the best option. Peach is really good at lining up grabs with her ability to autocancel all her aerials and punish spotdodges, but she can't do anything out of the grabs after the opponent passes 50% and can't be combo'd into a utilt or chased into anything from dthrow, and we just bthrow for damage.


Since Peaches never, ever use either fthrow or uthrow, they seem ideal for a buff. And Fthrow was a Melee kill move that was nerfed.

Buff her airdodge (bettering her defensive game) or give her an fthrow that kills G&W at 150% w/DI instead of 200.

 

[Browny]

Also, in general, a 1% damage buff is a lot. It adds up a lot as you hit with the move, and furthermore, it does increase the effectiveness of the knockback growth. Note that with a character like Sonic who lands a lot more hits than normal characters in exchange for his killing problems, that adds up a lot more than normal. Also, him having a notably better dash attack that is actually rewarding matters so much...

Except the % buff on dtilt and dair could be so much better used on ftilt and uair. those attacks are far more common. sure it might increase his damage overall but when you land maybe 1 of those attacks (dtilt/dair) per stock... its hardly effective at all

 

[.AC.]

is that thing where you get lag from using upb even though you grab the ledge with cetain chracters still around?

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

To address the Peach concerns...

First of all, those throw changes aren't really possible. There isn't a global throw modifier.

We are aware that Peach Bomber is not near the peak of useful moves. That's why it got a buff actually. It's always a double win when a character's problems can be reduced alongside making their bad moves good. We don't imagine it will be a major part of her metagame or anything, but it having some usefulness would not be bad.

Likewise, the thinking with fsmash was that Peach is a character who has trouble killing, but she shouldn't be "good" at killing. Giving her a few extra decent kill moves that aren't exceptional seemed like a good way to just push her up (we didn't think she was that bad to start). Regardless, it is the case that we really did see extraordinarily little Peach in internal testing (the least used character). Seeing how she works will be very interesting.

An airdodge buff would be possible, but removing quirky character specific weaknesses like that is something to be done with caution. I'm hesitant though wouldn't rule it out; Peach's performance is of great interest and will dictate what direction we go with her.

 

[Praxis]

If you want to make Peach's Peach Bomber useful, make it impact shields. The reason it's useless is that if the opponent shields, Peach passes through them harmlessly, then lands with a lot of lag. They just shield the easily-visible move, then punish with anything they want.

If the Peach Bomber interacted with shields, Peach would safely bounce off a shield, requiring a spotdodge or an attack to actually punish the Peach Bomber. THAT would make it useful.

It just seems to me that the changes you made will make zero difference to her metagame...I might get one kill in the entire set with fsmash, usually not even that...and I never use Peach bomber, except against Olimar (since the bomber interacts with Pikmin and isn't punishable as Peach bounces).

You can't increase the knockback of throws?

Oh, she's got one other useless move, if you want to look at buffing- Dtilt. Dunno if you can do anything with it though haha. It's got a tiny tiny spike hitbox inside her body- I've only actually landed it once, ever, and on accident at that as someone jumped through me under a platform.


EDIT: What about a ftilt buff? I don't use it particularly often and sometimes end up using it for kills because it's the only thing still fresh and end up killing MK at 160% or so with it since I haven't used it the entire match. Bump its knockback up 10-20% and it becomes something to save.

Or just leave her the same and increase the frequency of dot-eye and stitchface pulls. LOL

I know I'm suggesting a pile of things, just pick one XD

Regardless, I like this project better than B+.

 

[Adapt]

Yeah, I'm with Praxis in that you guys don't really understand certain character's metagame...

ZSS's F-smash is not a kill move, and it never will be, it is far too punishable. It's not used because of terrible starting and ending lag. It still won't be used if it's a bit stronger.

If you want to buff the move, remove some lag. Otherwise, the buff I would suggest is make it so jab 2 combos into jab 3.

If you want to give her a better killing power, increase the knockback of bair, fair, or down-B

 

[goodoldganon]

I don't want to sound rude AA, cause what you are doing is indeed noble. (Balancing Brawl without adding what we added) but you should be seeing the can of worms that balancing a Brawl opens up. Have fun with all this.

 

[_clinton]

Looking at this thing I can say that I like this project

 

[stingers]

The fact ROB got no changes at all kind of scares me...he has absolutely no way to get kills at high levels of play. The opponent HAS to seriously mess up for you to get a kill.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Don't say things like we don't understand before trying them. We did test ZSS a lot, including with Holms, a quality ZSS main from Wichita. Fsmash on ZSS is so improved you have no idea; before you actually use the new fsmash on her, you really can't judge it. It's now an extremely effective spacing tool and is not really punishable if used appropriately. It's situational of course, but ZSS was pretty good already so it's not like she needs super powered buffs. In general, it's just plain ineffective to judge the effectiveness of changes based on just reading them... Especially notable is that changes to stages and other characters were always considered, making things a pretty complex web. It's why we keep saying that actual playtesting is so important; it's really the only way to get a good feel for how a character actually performs.

We are both experts on game mechanics and extremely academic about the game. We also were able to playtest with a lot of players from the Midwest-west, an extremely character diverse region. I would prefer to avoid argument from credibility in this topic.

Of course, I knew there would be a lot of defending to be done by posting this. I can only trust the reward is worth more than the trouble in the end. I can say that I've already had a lot of positive personal experiences with this project. So far, it's definitely be worth it for me.

 

[hotdogturtle]

Wow this looks ****ing sweet. I can't wait to try it out. Great job AA and Thinkaman.

Edit: You know what I just realized? Reading through the list of changes and balances, I felt the exact same feeling of excitement that I felt when I read through AA's original post of NetBattle mods when he first started his server. lol nostalgia

 

[Dark Sonic]

Sonic almost never uses dair to attack, so up-ing the damage on that doesn't really DO anything. It has a bad hitbox, a lot of ending lag, and subpar knockback. It's only use is in movement so I don't know why you'd even think adding damage would do anything to it. Gonna have to agree with DJbrowny on that one. I don't know how the other changes would play out for the other characters that are getting negative feedback, but seriously, Sonic's dair is NOT useful for attacking. It's not it's damage that was the problem with it and you left everything BUT what was actually decent to start with exactly the same. Oh btw, Sonic's spring is not a meteor smash (unless you suddenly found a way to make meteor smashes. Changing the angle to 270 actually makes it a true spike, not a meteor). It's just pathetically weak which is why you can recover from it. The old angle is arguably more useful in practice because it puts the opponent in a less favorable position (it sends them out which makes it take longer to get to the stage, giving Sonic more time to get back down and finish the edgeguard). Straight up giving it a bigger base would be far more useful (this is currently just a gimmick that would only affect a few matchups at best).

/rant

All that being said, I can appreciate all the work you've put into this. I wouldn't play it personally because the system itself is my biggest gripe with brawl in the first place, but good job regardless.

Also...you can actually compensate for the KBG change that raising or lowering damage incurs. We do it all the time for brawl+.

Compensating knockback for damage changes written by leafgreen386

When using the hitbox mod, there are times when you want to change the damage while leaving the knockback of the move roughly the same. Although it's usually impossible to leave the move exactly as it was, you can get really close by following a few simple steps.

1) Make the new growth of the move equal to old growth * old damage / new damage. Rounding is at the editor's discretion. Sometimes, for some moves (ie. ones that are supposed to be used for combos) it's more appropriate to round down even if traditional rounding techniques say to round up, or vice-versa, if it would be more acceptable for the move to have more growth rather than less growth.
2) Subtract base equal to the damage you added (for damage buffs) or add base equal to the damage you subtracted (for damage nerfs). This part isn't perfect, but it usually works out about right for most moves, making it only a general guideline. Note that in general, this becomes less and less accurate as you make bigger damage changes, so if you're ever not sure, just use the following chart:

original damage * original growth   |   Base equivalent per 1%
                    0515                    0.50
                    0685                    0.67
                    0770                    0.75
                    1025                    1.00
                    1280                    1.25
                    1365                    1.33
                    1535                    1.50

Simply use whichever value is closest to the move you're working with. Few moves operate outside of this spectrum, although there are some moves with extraordinarily low growth where say... 10% worth of damage is equivalent to 1 base (these moves are generally projectiles). If you run into one of these moves, simply use the formula original damage * original growth / 1025 to figure out what the base equivalent of 1% is to the move.

For the majority of damage changes, rounding makes it so it's about 1 base per 1%, but with more substantial changes (or more radical moves that shift toward one end or the other of the spectrum) you need to follow a slightly different pattern.

 

[Overswarm]

While I approve of the idea of balancing Brawl, I find it unlikely to occur on any standardized scale.

Although, just FYI, ROB is pretty bad. He currently has to be psychic to get any KOs that his opponents don't actually GIVE him. He needs some sort of move change to one of his potential KO moves to compete in todays metagame, let alone one where everyone else is improved.

 

[bigman40]

I just looked at it for a little and I think it's great, but there's still a few problems that lie in it for Yoshi (a few wrong buffs too).

We still don't have an OoS game (but Dsmash can kill so it helps some).
Fair was buffered when it didn't need one. This move is slow, and has poor range. Making it have a better reward won't make us use it more.
and Dash attack got a bad buff. If it had a knockback change, then I'd agree, but it's still just a bad move overall it shouldn't be in a Yoshi's game.

Imo, Yoshi's throws and the SDI on his Dair are much more important to us than those two buffs due to the fact that now since we don't have CGs, we can't follow up on stuff anymore. Add that our throws are still weak, and we have a very sorry grab game. Dair......idk where to go with it, but I think it's a better option to buff than Fair. Less SDI on it and/or more hitstun on it would help us out tremendously. We know we all love using this move and we wish it wasn't wrongly nerfed.

Everything else, I see them as really good choices and will help Yoshi rise a little, but not enough to make him as viable as the changes that I see for the other characters.

 

[Mew2King]

I really like this a lot, way better than crappy Brawl+

 

[hotdogturtle]

I really like this a lot, way better than crappy Brawl+

you heard the man

 

[Steeler]

I really like this a lot, way better than crappy Brawl+

we have the King's blessing

we are destined for success!!

 

[Dark Sonic]

btw M2K hasn't played brawl+ since event 52. The one that had wavedashing and S-canceling.

Just saying <_<

/off-topic.

 

[demonictoonlink]

Dang...I wanted to post right after M2K...

 

[5ive]

lol,
What a way to diss the coders and the community.

 

[Rykoshet]

**** even M2k's backing this.

 

[goodoldganon]

I really like this a lot, way better than crappy Brawl+

We stopped Brawl+ bashing a while back. I expected juvenile and immature responses and posts from other people, but certainly not you. Of course I've been know to be wrong.

Don't be a tool. For the most part the flaming has died out in this topic, which is a good thing. We don't need it starting up again with ******* posts like this. If you are gonna post in this topic don't come in here with intention of bashing Brawl+. Come in here offering help to AA and the others at balance or that you just plain like it, but don't be a tool to an entire community.

Also, you should probably thank the crappy Brawl+ which is the only reason ANY of these codes even exist.

P.S.

Ike is gonna stall like a MF if this code ever is used in a tournament. You say you want to keep character weaknesses (when Praxis talked about Peach's nonsensical air dodge) but then you give someone with one of the worst recoveries in the game, one of the best ones? Ike could travel under too many level with Brawl+ gravity and no helpless fall on side-b, can you imagine what it will be like with regular Brawl gravity?

I do want to offer a word of wisdom:

Remember there are two sides to every change. A seemingly good change, like Ike's QD, sounds great on paper. Ike gets a lot of cool off the stage antics. But you have given him a massive recovery boost and a new tool that can be used for stalling.

 

[YagamiLight]

Hey AA (and Thinkaman, of course),

We had a fairly good discussion on Ike on IRC and I (as well as a few other quality [not that I am calling myself a quality user] users, of course) had a few ideas that could go further in addressing your goal so as to "address Ike's weaknesses". We essentially came up with a few things which I'll place into "supported" and "We'll see if it works out" categories.

The main weakness we wanted to deal with was the immense ease with which it is possible to shut down Ike with proper shielding, lowering defenses only to combo Ike and then retreat. I'll list what we came up with that we think are very tame options that'll make Ike somewhat of a threat if he grabs you.

Supported:

1) Increase Ike's pummel damage from 3% to 4% and give it a cannon sound (just for kicks, haha). This serves to give him a way to refresh his moves and increase the damage his overall throw game does.

2) Make Ike's Down Throw work like Game and Watch's Down Throw in that it becomes a weak meteor that the opponent can tech and Ike can then tech chase. Increase the damage by a bit, to like 8% or 9% or so.

3) Ike is really bad at dealing with well played hit and run tactics and I feel that giving him Roy's counter would help in that regard. Make the countering frame from 8-23 with the same cooldown frame of 58 or whatever it was. This makes it faster but it lasts less (15 frames) and has a ton of cooldown. Increase the damage to 1.5x, give it fire (optional, of course) and give it Roy's weird trajectory to give Ike something to deal with hit and run.

4) Ike currently has a 0-60% combo on Bowser that is pretty scary, if nothing else. I feel it's only fair to remove this by adding a very tiny bit of knockback to Ike's Back Throw. I think 1% more will do the trick well enough.

We'll see how it works out:

1) Ike's weak grab game could possibly be improved by giving him an Up Throw that does 12% damage, but this needs testing to see how it works out.

2) Likewise, Ike's Forward Throw could be made into a kill throw but, once again, it must be tested.

With these changes I believe that he will truly come to about "Diddy" level as those weaknesses won't be as glaring. He'll still have his bad assortment of flaws but they'll be mitigated somewhat.

Finally I must admit that you did an amazing job with Quick Draw. It opened up so many possibilities that were so easily capable of being done in Vanilla Brawl it's almost mind boggling as to why they didn't do it.

 

[Rykoshet]

We stopped Brawl+ bashing a while back. I expected juvenile and immature responses and posts from other people..

The hell is with the dean type response? You act like bashing isn't done on a constant basis.

 

[Rykoshet]

Hey AA (and Thinkaman, of course),

We had a fairly good discussion on Ike on IRC and I (as well as a few other quality [not that I am calling myself a quality user] users, of course) had a few ideas that could go further in addressing your goal so as to "address Ike's weaknesses". We essentially came up with a few things which I'll place into "supported" and "We'll see if it works out" categories.

The main weakness we wanted to deal with was the immense ease with which it is possible to shut down Ike with proper shielding, lowering defenses only to combo Ike and then retreat. I'll list what we came up with that we think are very tame options that'll make Ike somewhat of a threat if he grabs you.

Supported:

1) Increase Ike's pummel damage from 3% to 4% and give it a cannon sound (just for kicks, haha). This serves to give him a way to refresh his moves and increase the damage his overall throw game does.

2) Make Ike's Down Throw work like Game and Watch's Down Throw in that it becomes a weak meteor that the opponent can tech and Ike can then tech chase. Increase the damage by a bit, to like 8% or 9% or so.

3) Ike is really bad at dealing with well played hit and run tactics and I feel that giving him Roy's counter would help in that regard. Make the countering frame from 8-23 with the same cooldown frame of 58 or whatever it was. This makes it faster but it lasts less (15 frames) and has a ton of cooldown. Increase the damage to 1.5x, give it fire (optional, of course) and give it Roy's weird trajectory to give Ike something to deal with hit and run.

4) Ike currently has a 0-60% combo on Bowser that is pretty scary, if nothing else. I feel it's only fair to remove this by adding a very tiny bit of knockback to Ike's Back Throw. I think 1% more will do the trick well enough.

We'll see how it works out:

1) Ike's weak grab game could possibly be improved by giving him an Up Throw that does 12% damage, but this needs testing to see how it works out.

2) Likewise, Ike's Forward Throw could be made into a kill throw but, once again, it must be tested.

With these changes I believe that he will truly come to about "Diddy" level as those weaknesses won't be as glaring. He'll still have his bad assortment of flaws but they'll be mitigated somewhat.

Finally I must admit that you did an amazing job with Quick Draw. It opened up so many possibilities that were so easily capable of being done in Vanilla Brawl it's almost mind boggling as to why they didn't do it.

Ike's grab game is fine, they provide proper follow ups and frame traps based on weight and %. His grab game does what it should, and after about 5 hours of playing, he's fine. His biggest issue is that recovering high was NOT an option, it is a huge and beneficial option to use now. That's where it should end, he doesn't die unless he goes straight off the screen. I also think is that if he gets roy's counter (and I honestly think he should), the frame data for it should NOT change. It should be a high risk high reward move if the damage AND trajectory is going to change that significantly.

 

[goodoldganon]

The hell is with the dean type response? You act like bashing isn't done on a constant basis.

So you should accept people being idiots and being straight up mean to an entire group of people cause it's the internet?

I'm done modding the topic, I don't even have the power to mod but I find it startling you think it's ok to be rude to others cause it is the internet.

Also, if my opinion counts for anything, I'd say fix Peach's AD before any other change. Wario had a quirky weakness to grab releases (more so then anyone else) yet you fixed that. Grab releases could be considered a crippling weakness, I don't think asking for Peach to have a fair airddoge is that much to ask for.

 

[Knightcrawler]

IMO the differences in unbalance have more to do with hitboxes/hurtboxes/animations/priority/move properties than how strong moves are. For example, the major difference between Link's Spinslash and MetaKnight's Mach Tornado is that if you block a few hits from the Spinslash, you can unshield while the move is still going and attack straight through his sword. But MetaKnight's Mach Tornado continues to do hits no matter how long you shield. Since MK's Mach Tornado is also extremely mobile and has a much larger hitbox AND can combo itself, it's much, much more difficult to punish, even if you can't KO with it. And that's what makes it a better move.

 

[Rykoshet]

So you should accept people being idiots and being straight up mean to an entire group of people cause it's the internet?

You should shrug it off unless it's a personal attack. If you treat every comment against something you enjoy as one then the problem isnt that gamers are inherently rude.

Ike is gonna stall like a MF if this code ever is used in a tournament.

Under stage stalling has long since been stopped.